Diversity in the News

March 28th – April 4th, 2013
 

CBC DIVERSITY/COMMITTEE MEMBERS IN THE NEWS

• Daniel Nayeri live tweeted CBC Diversity’s panel on “Marketing Your Books to a Multicultural Audience”. Check out his tweets from 4/4 starting at noon for a great recap of the event’s big takeaways.

ON OUR RADAR

• Diversity in 2012 Young Adult Bestsellers, Part 1: Overview at Diversity in YA – includes pie charts and graphs 
• Diversity in 2012 Young Adult Bestsellers, Part 2: Main Characters Only at Diversity in YA
• Argentine Isol Takes Home World’s Largest Children’s Literature Prize, via Publishing Perspectives
• The Grown-Up Behind a Tween Phenomenon – the NY Times’ profile of Rachel Renee Russell includes the author discussing her decision to make the Dork Diaries protagonist white

Plain and Natural

When I joined this committee in January I jumped into the middle of a discussion that’s full of terms and ideas I need to think about.

As I read through various blog posts I was struck by the different points of view, even on the use of “diverse,” and "diversity.” For instance, Annie Schutte posted an interview with the Diversity Committee on the YALSA's The Hub blog and there were two comments: 

1. Hannah Gómez said: “We need to make a push to stop calling those books diverse books and multicultural books if want to emphasize that they are for everyone.”
2.  B.A Binns responded: “I have to disagree. The problem of discovery is difficult enough…We have to name them so we can find them.”

I noticed the way these words inspire unnatural phrases such as “coming from a place of a diversity,” “characters that don’t come from a place of diversity themselves.” Eeyike. Awkward. Aren’t we all Word People? Can’t we speak plainly? Do better?